'Project Runway' inspires young designers whose careers are taking off

Kristen Keys, 27, a Whitehaven High graduate who studied fashion merchandising at the University of Tennessee Martin, is a fashion illustrator who has been accepted to the honors program at London College of Fashion. Her sketches have been featured on Essence.com and by the fashion trends forecasting company WGSN.

Hutchison School graduate Elizabeth Blankenship, 23, attended New York's Fashion Institute of Technology and Central Saint Martin's College of Art and Design in London.

Courtesy of Central Saint Martin's College of Art and Design

Courtesy of Susan Hill
Reality TV “made fashion more tangible,” said Susan Rebecca Hill, 26. The Ridgeway High and UT-Knoxville graduate attends Parsons the New School for Design and has won a Michael Kors internship.

Susan Rebecca Hill applied online recently for a fashion design internship with Michael Kors and within 15 minutes got a phone call setting up an interview. A few days later, Hill, 26, was accepted for a four-month stint for which she will earn credit hours at Parsons the New School for Design in New York.

See how easy it is to get started as a designer?

Actually, this coup caps a lot of hard work for Hill, a native Memphian and graduate of Ridgeway High School.

Like many fashion design students, Hill thinks "Project Runway," the long-running reality TV show competition for budding designers, probably made becoming a designer seem more possible and better defined what the work entails.

"For a lot of people, it made fashion more tangible," she said. "You weren't just watching things come down the runway. It gave a peek at the process of taking ideas and turning them into something."

Elizabeth Blankenship, 23, a Hutchison School graduate who just completed postgraduate fashion design studies in London, likewise observed, "Seeing people actually being designers probably did have an effect on my career. It opened up the idea of being a designer without my even being aware of it."

The show, which began in December 2004, is taped at Parsons and features model Heidi Klum as host and judge; Tim Gunn, the former chairman of fashion design at Parsons, as design adviser; and, for a long time, had designer Kors as a regular judge.

In the past 10 years, Parsons' undergraduate fashion design and fashion marketing programs have seen enrollment jump roughly 140 percent, according to Parsons' communications office, though the school cannot say whether it was primarily the show that fueled interest in fashion design.

Hill earned a pre-law degree from the University of Tennessee before deciding fashion was her true calling. Now in her last semester of a two-year degree at Parsons, she has already completed an internship with designer Peter Som.

There she worked under Som's fashion director and did digital illustrations — inserting colors, patterns and prints onto his sketches — created mood boards for presentations, sourced fabrics and dealt with factories. Some color combinations she chose for prints he liked will actually make it into stores.

At Michael Kors, a much larger company, Hill will work with his design team from beginning to end as they create a spring collection. "Very few fashion companies have just one designer. They are usually teams," she said, noting that on "Project Runway," "those team challenges have a purpose. Fashion is not a one-person show. If you can't meet a deadline or work with people, then drop out of school, and find something else to do."

She has been told she will meet Kors and that "he's great with interns and wants to help them learn. He is exactly like on TV, always laughing, very sociable and hilarious."

"Project Runway" competitors who have felt his biting wit may feel differently. But Hill says that's also part of the real world of design. At Parsons, she might spend a week on a drawing that her instructor quickly dismisses. Shoppers make the same snap decisions.

There is one aspect of the show that's mostly fantasy, she said. "We never have to make a dress out of candy wrappers, or do one in 24 hours."

Blankenship graduated from New York's Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), where her dress for an exhibit honoring designer Valentino placed second out of 200. She then acquired a graduate degree at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London, where the late and great Alexander McQueen studied as did the much-celebrated Stella McCartney.

"At FIT, they prepare you to be a working designer," she said, with emphasis on the technical side and clothes that are salable. "At Saint Martins they prepare you to be the next famous designer. They want what has not been done."

Some intriguing designs by Blankenship include a collection in plasticized linen inspired by British military uniforms issued to civilian workers and others during World War II. She created a trench coat dress inspired by a garment for train conductors and an anorak inspired by factory workers' gear. She also created wide-legged, pleated, printed pants based on pants made for prisoners of war. "They were really cute," she said, although the POWs at the time may not have thought so.

One thing designers don't learn on "Project Runway" is their prospects for employment. A recent survey of FIT graduates found that of those who responded, 80 percent of associate degree graduates and 90 percent of bachelor's degree graduates were employed. But the school had no information on what sort of jobs they had.

Many "Project Runway" alumni do go on to work or continue to work as professional designers. Some have also become TV fashion commentators and personalities, teachers and writers.

Blankenship, recently returned from London, is seeking work in New York and feels confident. One of her best friends from FIT is now a purse designer for Coach while another, her roommate, designs children's clothes for OshKosh B'gosh.

They share a two-bedroom apartment on tree-lined streets in the West Village. She called it her dream area although the rent of $3,700 a month is a bit of a nightmare.

A native Memphian who has taken a very different tack toward a career in fashion is Kristen Keys, 27, a graduate of Whitehaven High School and a professional fashion illustrator.

Keys' early influences were closer to home. An aunt studied fashion design in Atlanta and became a patternmaker for a uniform company in Olive Branch. Keys used to see her patterns and her portfolio.

Keys graduated from the University of Tennessee-Martin with a degree in fashion merchandising, took courses and classes from successful illustrators in New York and London, and honed her style with water pens along the catwalks of the two cities.

Keys seems to capture the movement and sparkle of the shows in her quick sketches that have been featured on Essence.com and online for WGSN, a global fashion trends forecasting company.

She was recently accepted into an honors degree program at London College of Fashion to study fashion design. She wants to illustrate and create fashions. A fundraiser to help pay her tuition recently created an unexpected buzz as an enthusiastic crowd flocked to Art Village Gallery on South Main, where Keys' illustrations sold briskly. She also offers cards, prints and tote bags that can be accessed at her website, bykriskeys.com.

Keys thinks fashion illustration is having a bit of a revival in Europe and New York. Everyone with a camera phone is a photographer now, she notes. "People are trying to capture things in a different way."

A Parsons student may be forgiven if TV land and reality seem often to intersect. "Project Runway" is taped on the second floor of Parsons, said Hill, and although it is kept very separate from the school — Hills knows no one who has spotted Klum — celebrity sightings are common enough, and gentle-mannered Gunn, whom she has seen, is known on campus as "a big teddy bear," she said.

"Project Runway" judge Nina Garcia, who is also creative director of Marie Claire magazine and an FIT graduate, spoke at Blankenship's commencement. And one of Blankenship's former classmates, Helen Castillo, is a competitor on this season's show.

Blankenship, who no longer keeps up with the show, was surprised to learn that Castillo had been sent weeping into Gunn's arms early on after sending down the runway an unfinished gown trailing threads.